Iolo Search and Recover

At some time or another, we’ve all lost an important document. Now that we tend to keep our most precious files – from holiday snaps to music purchased online – on our computers, the chance of losing something irreplaceable has increased.

The best way to protect yourself is with a regularly performed back-up, possibly scheduled to transfer all your most important files to a server elsewhere on the internet. Even with a back-up plan, however, it might be sensible to create a safety net, and Iolo Search and Recover will do just that.

The software is something of a last line of defence and may be able to help if you’ve deleted a file, even if it’s been removed from your Recycle Bin. As long as the file hasn’t been overwritten by any other software, it should be recoverable.

The interface is easy to understand and operate. It’s broken down into different file types, such as photos, videos, music and emails (including support for Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird). There’s also the option of recovering any other type of file if it doesn’t fall into those categories.

A few other extras are thrown in for good measure, including secure deletion (but be absolutely sure you really want to delete things before using this) and some handy back-up options. It’s the recovery software that’s the main event, though. It works well, especially if you’ve got the software ready to spring into action the minute you realise that you’ve lost a file. The biggest downside is that £25 per year is quite a lot of money to pay for something you hope you’ll never need.